


The Accidental Serenade

by quantumoddity



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Love, First Meetings, Fluff, Neighbours AU, Shared love of music, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-31 21:08:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13983366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Eliza has a ghost in the apartment above her, a ghost who keeps her up at night playing the piano in the small hours. A ghost who has a very noisy puppy. A ghost who seems to have insomnia. But she slowly grows to love her upstairs neighbour.





	The Accidental Serenade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittlebitoftheuniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlebitoftheuniverse/gifts).



Eliza had never gone to bed with such vindictiveness.

“Goodbye, day,” she muttered aloud as she kicked her pants into a corner of her dark bedroom, unable to care about something so trivial as where her star patterned underwear ended up, “Get ready to go to day hell...where all the other shitty, terrible days go...where you belong…”

She knew talking out loud to herself wasn’t a particularly good sign and talking complete and utter nonsense to herself was even worse but she was frankly long past caring. With a long, exhausted exhalation, she fell into her bed, crawling under her thick comforter like she could hide from the rest of the world underneath it. Normally that worked, normally she could leave everything that was bothering her outside her apartment door, part of the reason why she thought of her little studio in Washington Heights as such a haven, a sanctuary, while her parents seemed to think of it more as a symptom of hopefully short lived teenage rebelliousness. But it seemed that this time, the frustration and exasperation and anger had slithered past the chipped wood of her door and under her comforter to settle heavily on her chest, refusing to be abandoned. Eliza squeezed her eyes shut as tight as she could, pulled her knees up to her chest and curled up small but she couldn’t make it go away.

It wasn’t so much that there’d been a cataclysm of some kind, there was no rupture in her day that had sent her spinning like this. It had been worse than that, it had been a myriad of little things, gnawing at her, swarming over her like red ants making her skin crawl, beating her down until she just hadn’t been able to take it anymore. Eliza felt so silly when she thought back on it, lying there in total darkness save the square of washed out streetlight falling across her face, an angular halo turning her ink black hair to an otherworldly ashy grey as it drifted across her pillow. What had happened really; a broken heel on her shoe, finding out she’d run out of tea bags with no time to run to the store, missing the train, stepping in a puddle, walking into the wrong meeting and having to blush fiercely and scamper out and walk in late to the one she was actually supposed to be taking an agenda for, receiving two rejections from the flock of part time jobs she’d applied to, finding out she’d failed an exam, getting the wrong train back and having no money for another fare, leaving her to trudge back to her apartment in the gathering dark, stifling back floods of tears that were looming by that point. In isolation, Eliza would feel stupid for letting any of those incidents get the better of her but when they crowded into her mind as a group, as they did in the darkness, all she could see was more and more evidence that she wasn’t cut out for this.

And when Eliza had stacked it all up against all the other terrible days she’d had since she moved into the city, a list that was growing worryingly long and formulaic, the evidence only mounted further. A bitter, depressing conclusion loomed out of it all, as much as she didn’t want to see it. The hope that had buoyed her through making her fancies and daydreams of independence and dream jobs and making a difference and coffee sipped on balconies overlooking midnight cityscapes was sickening and might not last much longer. Eliza was running out of money, running out of motivation and running out of faith.

Moving out of her parents’ place hadn’t been the rash, impulse decision the rest of her family seemed to think it was. It hadn’t been an overreaction to not being allowed to visit her sister unaccompanied, it hadn’t been a thoughtless retaliation to the raised eyebrows her announcement that she wanted to train as a social worker had reaped. It hadn’t been an attempt, as her mother had put it, to ‘play at being Angelica’. That one had rankled most and thinking back on it now made acid hot tears burn behind Eliza’s tightly closed eyelids and her lower lip tremble.

She wasn’t trying to be Angelica. She was just trying to be Eliza. And seeing as she was failing so spectacularly at it, what did that say about her?

She turned over under the covers, muscles staying tight and tense, face staying screwed up rather than placid and ready for sleep. It was never going to happen, not with this tugging in her chest and the sensation that the room around her was getting smaller and tighter and hotter, like a pressure was growing around her, grimly determined to crush her down inch by inch until she disappeared entirely. Like the world just didn’t want her in it and, as the dark, depressing thoughts crowded into her unguarded mind, Eliza found herself unable to blame it.

Her mind writhed, panicking, in stark contrast to her utterly still body, it raged and ran and reached out desperately for anything to soothe it and make this whole stupid attempt at breaking out of her stifling childhood, trying to run before she’d even stood up, let alone walked, the faith she’d put in herself slipping through her fingers and shattering on the ground, to make any of it worth it.

What it found was so strange, it took a moment to even realise it was real.

Blinking, eyes adjusting to the lack of light and ears adjusting to what they were actually hearing, Eliza sat up in bed, the comforter slipping down to leave one shoulder bare. She half expected it to fade so she could surmise that it was just her being caught between sleeping and waking. But no, it was still there. It had followed her into the real world.

Music. Soft, gentle, artfully played music, slightly muffled by the walls between her and wherever it was coming from. Or who was playing it, rather, Eliza was certain this was no recording, it had to come from a human being. It was far too raw, too many notes just ever so slightly out of place and too fluid a tempo and volume to be a polished performance. Eliza shifted a little, looking up, for she was awake enough now to tell that the music was coming from the apartment above her’s. She’d studied music herself, if being one of her favourite subjects at school, playing the flute and clarinet and saxophone and, yes, also the piano. So, while she didn’t recognise the song, she could so easily hear the passion in it, the skill of the player and how much they clearly adored their instrument, it spread to her other senses too until it was as if she could taste it, feel it, touch it.

Eliza had made an effort to get to know her neighbours but she hadn’t known someone lived directly above her, she never ever met anyone coming down the stairs. There’d been no other noises, no scuffling or muttering or footsteps, which was surprising given how clearly she could hear the music, every note, clearly the walls weren’t thick. Had they just moved in? Was she living under some kind of very low budget Phantom of the Opera?

But questions like that didn’t really need answering, not in the almost midnight darkness, in the orange glow of the streetlights outside being the only respite from the almost total black of the room. Eliza just sank back into her pillows, looking up at the ceiling as the song continued. Without even a pause, the song shifted into another one, totally different and yet the change was masterful, seamless. Even though the melodies had some kind of narrative, a clear tone to them, no lyrics appeared to accompany any of them. Eliza had to chuckle softly to herself at that, maybe the invisible pianist didn’t want to reveal their identity to whoever was being rudely woken up by their playing, for fear of their life. A wise move.

It was having the opposite effect on her, however. She couldn’t say what it was about it, maybe the absurdity of it all. Maybe it was just the distraction she needed. Maybe it was how the music had seemed to appear just at the moment she needed it the most, like an answer to a prayer, a lifeline hurled into the sea. A little proof that the world didn’t actually hate her, an example of the good that could still be found in the city, in the life she was building. Something to chase.

Eliza found her eyes closing before she knew it, her muscles now relaxed and loose like they’d never known the meaning of the word tense, her heartbeat slow and rhythmic and lulling. She was a little reluctant to let go of the music but sleep claimed her and she left her rotten day behind gladly, with a soft smile on her face.

***

Alex was so preoccupied with the mountain of grocery bags in his arms he’d somehow convinced himself he could totally carry all at once, no problem, with the small grey dog bouncing around his legs in eager, loud, yappy welcome, positively in paroxysm to have her master home, he almost missed the note on his front door entirely.

He had to go back for it after dumping the groceries on the piano, which was serving as his table for now. Alex swiped it off where it was tacked on, with an inward groan of worry, what the hell had he done now? He’d paid the rent on time, granted, he’d had to use nickels for some of it but it was still the right amount. That was legal, right? He should probably know the answer to that, given that he was doing a law degree, but sometimes indignant ignorance was bliss.

“Ai, alright girl, alright, hello,” he sighed as he returned with the folded note, bending to scratch his dog behind the ears so she’d stop clawing at his shins, “I missed you too, scruff.”

He let her rest her forepaws on his knee and cover his face in grateful licks as he unfolded it and read it. The handwriting was a lot neater than his landlord’s, making his anxiety ease just a tad.

It was a very short, succinct little missive, clearly penned in a hurry.

_I really enjoyed your playing. If you take requests, could I have Für Elise, if you know it?_

There was no signature, he had no idea who’d left this for him but by the end of those few short sentences, a deep blush had crept across his face and to the tops of his ears. Alex only let himself have a few moments of dumbfounded pause before he scrambled up.

He had some sheet music to acquire and a song to learn.

**Author's Note:**

> My girlfriend came up with the idea for this AU! You can visit her awesome Tumblr @childofdustandashes or if you like my writing, you can find more on my Tumblr @my-dearesteliza


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